Below are some notes that I took when I read Joshua Foers book on the subject. Foer doesnt go into as much detail as Ed does, but he does give a good summary of the PAO System which he learned from Ed as well. If you want to refer to the actual book itself, Foer begins talking about the technique on page 166 of his book, Moonwalking with Einstein.

Ive also modified the symbolic representations of the suits only slightly, based on Jungs archetypes.

The art of speed cards is in finding the perfect balance b/w moving quickly and forming detailed images. You want to catch just enough of a glimpse of your images so as to be able to reconstruct them later, without wasting precious time conjuring up any more color than necessary. j.f.

I just finished reading Forer's book. It's kind of creepy: the writer lives in his parents' basement and trains for a memory contest with an assortment of what can only be described as pathetic losers. Yeah, they're all very smart, and can memorize pi to thousands of places, but that's about the extent of their contribution to the world.

I thought I'd posted this somewhere before, but can't find it. I have literally thousands like this - "On December 30, 2008 I celebrated my 86th birthday. Earlier this month on December 1st, I put on a memory program for the Peachtree Corners Rotary Club, Norcross, Ga., and in my presentation I used over 2,000 numbers, all 159 Counties of the State of Georgia and County seats of each county (largest in population to the smallest), 6 decks of playing cards, and 3 different editions of TIME magazines. Thanks Harry for your contribution to my life. Since learning and using your memory-training techniques I have been able to accomplish this feat.
Ben C. Robertson"

I also posted somewhere someone's letter to the NY Times (don't know if they ever used it), anyway I'll paraphrase him -
"Writing about memory training and not mentioning Harry Lorayne is like writing about the theory of relativity without mentioning Albert Einstein!" (I think it also shows a lack of knowledge - or perhaps stealers don't want to mention from whom they steal?)

Oh, it can be done, but at the time I only had access to the 30-something digits. Torsten Allers, in the class above me, knew it to 200 places, but wouldn't tell me any more!

At the time, however, I had no knowledge of Harry or his books, so I worked out my own technique for remembering things (which has served me well over the years). A dozen years ago or so I got a booklet by Zufall, which filled in some gaps, but I've always found it easier to use my own system (I suppose if you learn something like this very young, it's hard to switch). I imagine that if I knew nothing about the systems then Harry's books would be a place to start (or Dominic O'Brian).

Ian, I'm sure you used that information to do something useful -- therefore not a loser, even by fractions. I memorized the Nikola system when I was about 12 to do card tricks -- but the people in Forer's book, all they DO is memorize. I prefer what I think Sherlock Holmes once said: never remember anything you can look up (I may have forgotten the actually reference -- yeah, irony is everywhere).

I meant no disrespect Mr. Lorayne. Im quite new to the memory game. I just picked-up two books of yours at the local public libraryThe Memory Book and Ageless Memory. One appears to be for people over 50. I figure I have a lot of catching-up to do and might as well read both to cover my loses.